The Prettiest One: A Thriller (19 page)

“I don’t know what to think,” Caitlin said. “Wait. Yes, I do. I think we should get the heck out of here now.”

Bix nodded. “Not a bad idea.”

They walked together back to Bix’s SUV to find that the tattooed teens had left the hood of whoever’s car they had been sitting on and were now leaning against the car immediately behind Bix’s. Bix walked past them as if he owned the street, and Josh followed right behind, doing a credible job of appearing unconcerned about anything at the moment. Josh opened Caitlin’s door for her and she slipped inside, and Josh slid into the backseat while Bix cranked the engine. For a terrible moment, Caitlin feared that the Explorer wouldn’t start . . . that the teens had somehow disabled it in the few seconds she and the guys had been across the street, and that, like cats playing with cornered mice, they’d allowed them to reach what they considered the safety of the car only to find that they could go nowhere. But the engine turned right over and Bix hit the gas, and soon they were down the street, then around the corner and thankfully on their way back to parts of the city where the citizens didn’t need iron bars to protect them.

The hole was almost big enough for Benny now . . . or, rather, what was left of him. Chops figured another ten minutes of digging and he’d be finished. Good thing, too, because he had a 10:40 flight out of LAX that morning. Traffic was always a bitch around Los Angeles, but any time near rush hour was particularly horrible and enough to drive almost anyone to violence. If Chops wanted to be at the airport at least an hour before his flight, he’d have to get back on the road soon.

The
thunk
of Chops’s shovel sinking into the earth almost masked the approaching footsteps. Standing nearly knee-deep in a six-foot-long hole in the forest floor, Chops turned and saw a young man walking toward him. He wore a T-shirt, cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a goofy smile. Over his shoulder he carried a curved metal pole with attachments at one end and a circular contraption at the other.

“Hey, looks like you found something,” the man said.

Chops saw now that the device the man carried was a metal detector.

“It does?” Chops said, stepping out of the hole. He kept the shovel in his hands.

“Good for you,” the man said. He stopped a few feet from Chops. The smile hadn’t left the idiot’s face.

“Thanks,” Chops said, because he had no idea what else to say.

“I think we might be the first ones out here,” the man said.

“I guess.”

He stood there, shovel in hand. The other guy stood nearby, leaning a little to the side now, trying to peer around Chops into the hole.

“You get a good read?” the man asked.

Chops said nothing, because he didn’t have a clue what the guy was talking about.

“A good hit?” the man added, which didn’t clear things up at all, so Chops remained silent. “Come on,” the guy said. “Just between you and me . . . you find something big?”

Chops had no idea what to say. He couldn’t get a read on the situation.

“Listen,” the man said, “it’s just the three of us out here so far . . . well, four, including you . . . at least as far as I can tell. But more could be coming soon. We want to work fast, right? I’m assuming you don’t own this land any more than I do, am I right?”

He was right. They were in the hills of Angeles National Forest, which was probably owned by the state or the county or something. Where they were was remote and, to the best of Chops’s knowledge, the six bodies he had buried around here over the past few years hadn’t yet been discovered.

“There are three of you?” Chops asked, thinking about how big a complication that could be. He looked at his watch. He had a plane to catch.

“Yeah, my brother and his buddy,” the man said. “I’m Doug, by the way.”

Doug wouldn’t stop smiling and Chops was getting frustrated enough to use his shovel to wipe that stupid, friendly grin off the guy’s face.

“What’s in the big Hefty bag?” Doug asked.

Chops knew the guy would finally stop smiling if he heard the truth, but instead Chops replied, “More digging tools.”

“Where’s your metal detector?” Doug asked. “What kind do you have? I’ve got a Treasure Pro. Latest model. Set me back eight bills, but it’ll be worth it if we find what we’re looking for up here, right?”

“Sure,” Chops said, nodding. “There are two others with you, huh?”

“Yeah. Usually it would just be my brother and me on something like this, but his buddy was over last night and we were watching TV together when that show came on, and Ron and me—Ron’s my brother—we figured, what the heck? Let’s let Chuck come on this one. To be honest, we thought we’d be the first ones up here this morning, but then we saw your truck off the road near the trailhead. Looks like you might have been trying to park it inconspicuously”—and here he winked at Chops—“but we had our eyes open for other people, so we saw it.”

Chops had indeed been trying to park inconspicuously. It was the smart thing to do when you had to leave your truck somewhere while you lugged a dead body deep into the woods to bury it.

“Here’s the deal,” Doug said. “You don’t have any more right to be here than we do, right? You don’t own this land and neither do we. But there could be a fortune around here . . . heck, maybe right where you’re digging, am I right? Seems to me there’ll be plenty to share. So why don’t I get Ron and Chuck over here and we all dig together and split whatever we find?” When Chops didn’t respond right away, Doug quickly added, “Look, you were here first. You found this spot. You can keep half and we’ll split the other half among the three of us. That’s fair, right?”

Chops tried his best to process what the hell Doug was talking about. Whatever it was, Chops knew he had to meet Ron and Chuck, too. “Listen, Doug,” he said, “you obviously caught me in the middle of something here. Before we can make a deal, I want to be sure exactly what we’re talking about. So why don’t you tell me about the TV show you guys saw that brought you up here, okay?”

“Come on,” Doug said, “you must have seen the same show. Why else would you be up here?”

“Humor me,” Chops said. “If we’re gonna make a deal, I need to know we’re on the same page. Tell me about the show.”

Doug shook his head, smiling. “I’m talking about
60 Minutes
last night. The story about that professor’s new theory about a few of Cortez’s men going AWOL or whatever with a bunch of Aztec gold and running north with it, out of Mexico. This guy’s supposedly an expert, and he thinks they ended up burying it in this area before they were tracked down and killed. He had a bunch of evidence supporting his theory—maps and old diaries and stuff. All of it came to light when it was found in some archive in some library somewhere.”

“And you’re what?” Chops asked. “A treasure hunter?”

“Same as you,” Doug said, somewhat defensively.

“Ever find any?” Chops asked, genuinely curious.

“Found some silver coins once. Thought they were pirate coins but they weren’t. Got five hundred bucks for them anyway, though.”

Chops found himself disappointed. It would have been a better story if Doug had found pirate treasure, even if only a few coins’ worth.

“How about you?” Doug asked. “Ever find anything good?”

“Not yet,” Chops said.

“Well, today could be your lucky day,” Doug said, grinning again. “A very lucky one.”

Chops doubted it. He’d already been terribly unlucky this morning. All the times he’d been up here, he’d never run into a single soul. Yet there he was now, trying to lay Benny to rest on a tight schedule, having to deal with Doug the treasure hunter.

“So what’s the story?” Doug asked. “You get a strong reading right there? Get a gold signature? Silver, maybe?”

Chops looked at his watch again.

“Listen, man,” Doug said, “I’ve gotta get back to the guys. Even if you don’t want to work together, we’re gonna come over here and start digging, too. It’s a free country, and we can’t let you have all the fun. So we might as well dig together, right? What do you say? Half for you, half for the three of us? Do we have a deal?”

Chops didn’t know anything about gold or silver signatures, but he figured they had to do with the way metal detectors worked. And he didn’t know about Cortez or
60 Minutes
. What he did know, though, was that he needed to meet Ron and Chuck.

“What the hell?” he said. “You go get the guys and I’ll keep working the shovel.”

Doug grinned even wider and hurried off.

Chops was glad he’d soon have help digging. He still had a plane to catch, and this hole needed to be a lot bigger now.

CHAPTER TWENTY

AS BIX DROVE, CAITLIN KEPT her eyes open for anything that might be familiar to her, but she was getting close to quitting that game. It seemed less and less likely she was going to remember anything around here. Then something flashed in her mind like an image projected for an instant on a screen, an image of . . . an overcooked chicken. But Caitlin sensed that it wasn’t from her time in Smithfield.

“Josh,” she said, “I’m remembering burned chicken . . . and Chinese food.”

After a moment, Josh said, “Wow, honey, I can’t believe you remember that.”

“What is it?”

“The night you disappeared, you and I were chatting and you lost track of time and completely burned the chicken you were baking for dinner. We had to order from Happy Garden.”

Happy Garden was their favorite Chinese restaurant back home. Caitlin felt a sense of accomplishment for having remembered something else from that night seven months ago. If only she could remember what happened since then.

“We’re here,” Bix said as he slowed down the car.

“I saw an open parking spot two blocks back,” Josh said.

“It’s okay, I found one,” Bix said.

He pulled the Explorer into a handicapped spot near the street corner, then pulled a blue plastic handicapped-parking tag from a pocket on his door and hung it from the rearview mirror. Caitlin heard Josh sigh as they all climbed out of the car.

“Now, come on, Katie,” Bix said. “You must remember this place.”

They were standing on the sidewalk looking at a brick-faced pub with neon beer signs in the windows. All of the signs were turned off at the moment. A sign over the door read
Commando’s
.

Caitlin sighed. Sadly, she wasn’t surprised to find that she didn’t recognize it. “I worked here, huh?”

“Since the week after you came to town,” Bix said.

She shook her head.

“Okay,” Bix said, “shake it off. Let’s go inside and talk to a few folks. Maybe someone can tell us something useful. Other than me, these are the people you spent more time with than anyone else around here. Maybe you told someone about where you were going the other night, and why you would have ended up in that warehouse.”

“I don’t think they’re open yet,” Caitlin said.

“You work here, Katie,” Bix said. “They’ll open the door for you. Hell, for all we know, you’re on the schedule for the lunch shift today.”

Caitlin nodded but didn’t move. Josh put a gentle hand on her lower back and guided her toward the door. He pulled on the big, worn brass handle but the door was locked. He knocked. When no one answered, he knocked again, louder. A face appeared in one of the windows, and a moment later, a lock inside disengaged with a sharp clack and the door opened. A short, middle-aged woman with dry hair, bad skin, and more than a few extra pounds stood in the doorway. She wore a waitress’s apron. Not surprisingly, Caitlin didn’t recognize her.

“It’s you,” the woman said.

Without a clue as to the proper response, Caitlin said, “It sure is.” She smiled, though for all Caitlin knew, she and this woman hated each other. Or maybe they’d been fast friends. Caitlin had no idea.

“What do you want?” the woman asked. So much for them being buddies.

Caitlin dropped her eyes quickly to the woman’s plastic nametag and said, “Hi, uh, Martha. Can we come in?”

“Why? We’re busy, as you should know. We open in half an hour.”

“Yeah . . . of course I know. I just . . . uh . . . am I on today? I forgot to check the schedule.”

Martha stared at her blankly for a moment. “You stop coming to work two weeks ago, you don’t answer my phone calls, and now you wonder if maybe you’re on the schedule today?”

“I . . . what? I stopped coming to work two weeks ago?”

After a pause, Martha said, “Are you freaking kidding me?” Then she closed the door.

Bix looked at Caitlin. “You stopped going to work two weeks ago?”

“I . . . I guess.”

“So where the hell were you going when you left the house every night lately, when you were supposed to be working the late shift?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“You really didn’t know her as well as you thought, did you, Bix?” Josh asked.

“We already covered that, Josh. Neither of us does, remember?”

“Make that all three of us,” Caitlin added.

Josh knocked on the door again. When no one answered, he knocked loud and long until the door opened again, quickly this time, having been unlocked and yanked open with attitude. Stout little Martha was nowhere in sight. In the doorway stood a man with a thick gut, thick arms, a scowl on his face, and a toothpick stuck between his teeth.